Today Steve Jones talks about a new use for cloud computing with Excel to analyze large sets of data.

Raw Materials - Auguries

by Larry Gonick

SQLServerCentral.com

Comic Strip

his quest for certainty, Arthur plays chicken with common sense.

SQL Peer-to-Peer Dynamic Structured Data Processing Collaboration

by Additional Articles

Other

Unstructured and XML semi-structured data is now used more than structured data. But fixed structured data still keeps businesses running day in and day out, which requires consistent predictable highly principled processing for correct results. For this reason, it would be very useful to have a general purpose SQL peer-to-peer collaboration capability that can utilize highly principled hierarchical data processing and its flexible and advanced structured processing to support dynamically structured data and its dynamic structured processing. This flexible dynamic structured processing can change the structure of the data as necessary for the required processing while preserving the relational and hierarchical data principles. This processing will perform freely across remote unrelated peer locations anytime and transparently process unpredictable and unknown structured data and data type changes automatically for immediate processing using automatic metadata maintenance.

Archiving

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral.com

Editorial

It seems that archival isn't on the mind of most designers when they first build a database, which is OK, but DBAs ought to be building skills to implement this if the data size grows large.

Patch Week

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral.com

Editorial

This week Steve Jones notes there were quite a few patches from Microsoft for a variety of products. No SQL Server specific security patches, but that doesn't mean that DBAs shouldn't be patching systems.

Slowly changing dimensions using T-SQL MERGE

by Adam Aspin

SQLServerCentral.com

MERGE

Of all the technical solutions to the problem of slowly changing dimensions, the T-SQL MERGE statement is one of the most elegant.

A Tale of Identifiers

by Additional Articles

SimpleTalk

Database Design

Identifiers aren't locators, and they aren't pointers or links either. They are a logical concept in a relational database, and, unlike the more traditional methods of accessing data, don't derive from the way that data gets stored. Identifiers uniquely identify members of the set, and it should be possible to validate and verify them. Celko somehow involves watches and taxi cabs to illustrate the point.

SQL Saturday #82 - Indianapolis

by Press Release

SQLServerCentral.com

SQL Saturday

Come to Indianapolis on June 25, 2011 for a free one day training event on SQL Server.

Multiple Failures

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral.com

Editorial

This Friday Steve Jones has a disaster recovery poll. When you have a true disaster, often there are multiple things that go wrong and cause a cascading failure. Is this common, let us know what your experience is this Friday.